Great read

TRIGGER WARNING: Nazi brutality and anti-semitic ideology

1942, Emilie arrives at Dachau to help her husband Otto with his medical experiments. She believes the inmates are all criminals so is shocked to find their former childhood friend Danner, a Jew, among the prisoners. His only crime is being Jewish and she is determined to save him...

The Nurse Behind The Gates is an historical novel set in the 1930s and 40s.

Emilie and her husband are forced to help the Nazis to help save German soldiers in the freezing seas. They join the medical team at Dachau where experiments use the inmates as live subjects. Death is a necessary evil for the cause but Emilie is distraught at the thought of her first love being in danger.

The book is written in 1942 to show Emilie's experiences in the concentration camp but also has chapters from the past to show the friendship with Danner and how they both reached their current situation. The experiment scenes were quite horrific and I had to put the book down to go and get distracted by happy thoughts. I felt desperately sad for Otto. He is in an impossible situtation with his uncle and the Nazis and also knows that he is second best for his wife.

There was one part of the book that didn't ring true for me. I didn't really believe that Danner would put himself in danger when he could have written to his old neighbours for information about his missing father instead of travelling back to Germany himself and abandoning his family. Other than this, the book was completely captivating and I felt immersed in the lives of the characters.

The Nurse Behind The Gates is a devastatingly emotional imagining of the Nazi experiments at Dachau.

Set in 1942, this gripping story centers on Emilie, a German nurse who arrives at Dachau under the impression that she’s there to treat criminals. Her illusions quickly unravel when she learns that her first love, Danner—a Jewish man—is imprisoned there. As Emilie confronts the brutal truth about the camp and her husband’s disturbing role as a camp doctor, she’s forced to make heartbreaking choices that challenge her beliefs and the strength of her love.

Compelling reading.Couldn’t put it down.

This story was gripping I was engrossed in it and it was heartbreaking what everyone suffered.i couldn’t wait to read it at night as it gripped me from the start.x

I found the constant flipping of the book between time periods quite off putting. Just as I felt the story started to flow,it stopped.

I didn’t particularly like the character of Otto as I found him weak.

On a positive note the story was realistic and showed the horror and atrocities of the concentration camps and the activities that took place in there.

For me this was one of the weakest stories I have read by this author so was slightly disappointed. Something was missing for me.

3 stars

This is a beautifully written, harrowing tale of love, loss and hope during WWII.

Danner and Emilie are the very definition of childhood sweethearts. He has grown up on the same street as her, and their mutual friends, Otto, Felix and Gertie. They realise that they love each other early in their teenage years, when they begin to see each other a little differently to how they see their other friends.

As the world around them begins to change, and not for the better, Danner realises that he cannot love Emilie, for he is a Jew, and he does not want to place her in Danger.

As time progresses and the situation for Jews becomes more and more dangerous, he begs her to marry their mutual friend Otto, and promise that she will be happy.

At first, it seems like the right thing to do. But when she is forced to give up her medical studies and move to Dachau with Otto who is involved in a research project she wonders if she's made a mistake.

It isn't until she begins work at Dachau herself that she wonders if she knows her husband at all.

The 'research' that he is involved with is human experimentation, and Danner is one of the inmates that she will be expected to participate experimenting on.

Emilie knows that Danner did nothing wrong? Dachau is a camp for criminals or so she thought? She quickly realises that the Nazi regime that she opposes regards simply being a Jew as a crime.

She is appalled and horrified, wanting to run away from her husband and Dachau and never return. But she knows that she must stay and work through her anger and fear if she is ever hope of saving Danner.

Shari's books just get better and better another read that I couldn't put down and now the hard task of waiting for her to write a new one for me to quickly read love and be impatient for the next. The writing style is fantastic long may Shari have inspiration to write

Great book!

The Nurse Behind the Gates story focused on two individuals living in Germany, before, during, and after World War II. One of the people was a German female, the other, a Jewish male. This is their story, a story of friendship and caring, love and loss, pain and suffering. It is also a story dealing with family, friends and neighbors, and the government, of secrecy and not knowing who can be trusted, of keeping quiet for fear of someone overhearing and reporting it to the Nazi government. It is a depressing story, without a lot of hope, but somehow hope makes its way through and becomes the only thing to propel those in pain, forward.

I had a difficult time with the many different timelines, and the going back and forth among them. It sometimes became hard to follow the story, the characters, and the events. It is a good story and well-written and certainly bears witness to the realities of the events that took place under Nazi rule. It is a wake-up call for us, the readers, to be aware of what can happen when tyranny has free reign.

My heart will never be the same....this one was heart wrenching and crushed it a few times. This author's writing are amazing and always bring everything out of us readers. I highly recommend this book.

Shari Ryan is one of my favorite authors. Her depictions of events and characters are mesmerizing. Human Experimentation of Jews by the Nazi Regime was horrific. As hard as it was to read, I just couldn’t stop, and that’s the point. We must never stop reading and must never forget. Ryan is a brilliant author.

This is an excellent book! Well written! It is for me who has read many similar books true and fiction, but this one seemed so real!